


Monsters

by Sed



Series: Everything Turned Out Okay [4]
Category: Tron (Movies), Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Het and Slash, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 04:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sed/pseuds/Sed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During a surprise visit from Flynn and Sam, a new and dangerous form of program appears, threatening the survival of the entire Grid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of a larger series, and without having read those previous stories, some of the details here might not make sense.
> 
> This would have been a single chapter, but I was on page 21 and only a third of the way through. I figured it would be nicer to cut it up into smaller chapters.
> 
>  
> 
> July 17 2014 - I am still working on this fic, and have every intention of finishing it. Unfortunately with my work schedule and moving (again) I am just not able to give it the attention I would like. I don't want to slap something together just to get the fic over with. I'd rather wait until I'm settled and I have more time in August to write something worth the wait.
> 
> July 16 2017 - Nearly 3 years to the day, I'm finally able to say I am working on finishing this. I don't know if anyone is still waiting for the new chapter, but here you go.

Clu rolled over on the bed, catching a flash of light through the drawn shutters before coming to a stop on his stomach. He reached between the sheets to where Quorra lay in a tangle of cloth; her white circuits pulsing in time with the rise and fall of her chest. Like Clu, Quorra didn’t sleep often, but when she did it was deep and still. As he watched her breathe, Clu calculated that she was well into her sleep cycle, with a while yet before she would wake on her own. Reaching up, he traced the curve of her shoulder with his fingers, fixated on the warmth emanating not from circuits, but the skin itself; as though she were more than just an appealing shell carrying energy and code. Something different, and _frightening_ —but still oddly enthralling in her own way.  
  
 _Almost like a user_.  
  
Maybe Flynn had been right all along. Clu couldn’t explain it, he couldn’t account for it in his programming, or reconcile it with what he knew of order and function, but he felt it. At first it frustrated him, but over time he began to admit that he _liked_ Quorra. He wanted to be with her, and when she wasn’t around, when she was busy carrying out her tasks as Radia’s liaison to the Basic factions, he actually _missed_ her. Just like he missed Tron whenever the system monitor was off securing some far corner of the Grid.  
  
Clu wrapped his arm around Quorra’s waist and snugged himself against her, enjoying the warmth. With his chin tucked into the valley above her collar, he began silencing his feeds and channels one by one, forcing a period of downtime he knew would put him on roughly the same schedule as hers. Someone would be left trying to reach him, but he had his assistant for that; the nervous little bootlicker was probably out pacing the halls at that very moment, waiting for Clu to emerge so he could shadow him around the Grid. He was almost as bad with Tron and Quorra, prompting Tron to threaten him unless he kept himself out of sight whenever he was around. Quorra was much more patient, and Clu had once worried that Jarvis might vibrate himself into a pile of voxels whenever she flashed him a smile. In the meantime, he would make do collecting data to sort and queue for perusal, and Clu would enjoy his time with Quorra, waiting for her to wake up.  
  
When he opened his eyes again, a quick realignment with the Grid told Clu that a quarter of a milicycle had passed since he drifted off to the comforting rhythm of data filing. He was on his back, one arm tucked under the pillow beneath his head, the other resting on his own chest. A curious tickle across his thigh prompted him to look down, where he found Quorra, grinning and much more alert than he felt at that moment, crouched beside his legs.  
  
“Hello,” she said with a smile.  
  
“Users say _good morning_ ,” Clu reminded her. Quorra’s interest in users had led her to start asking for every scrap of data that he could think of regarding the creator and the world he came from. He had no problem relating most of it, but found Quorra had a difficult time picking up the nuances he considered fairly simple. She loved to hear about them—couldn’t make a habit of anything that wasn’t complimentary to her own routines, though.  
  
She crossed her arms over his thighs and settled her weight onto the bed. “There is no morning on the Grid,” she said. “How do you know if it would be appropriate to say it now?"  
  
“I don’t. It seems right, though. Come here.” He reached out, ready to pull her into his arms, but apparently Quorra had other ideas. The quick flash of a mischievous grin was his only warning before she leaned forward to lick the inside of his thigh, trailing her tongue across circuits and skin, her lower lip ghosting along as she made the journey up to the valley of muscle at the base of his abdomen. Her hair fell in a black curtain around her face, but Clu still strained to watch as she turned and headed back down, mouth flush against his skin, over the trail of hair leading to the base of his cock. He was hard, and felt harder than he’d ever been, despite the unbidden reading that told him no, it was within the same rigidity margins as the last three times. Sometimes he hated that he couldn’t cut himself off from his own self-awareness.  
  
“Quorra,” he breathed out on an exhale. “Don’t tease.” Half in need, half without meaning to, he twitched his hips, brushing his cock against her soft skin and sending another jolt of arousal singing across his circuits. Quorra deftly moved to avoid him, making Clu grit his teeth and twist his hands into the sheets, writhing against his own frustration.  
  
Finally he felt the barest touch from her soft lips, grazing the head of his cock before disappearing, then reappearing a moment later against the hot skin and circuits along the shaft. With his head still held up from the bed, Clu could see the flush of lavender cast across Quorra’s face, reflected from his own circuits. He dropped his head against the pillow and arched himself until he shook, dropping back down again when it earned him nothing but a warm puff of air against his erection. “You’re always telling Tron to be patient,” she reminded him, before pressing her lips to him once more. “You should lead by example.” The words, spoken against his aching cock, were like energy poured across his body, lighting him up from head to toe. He reached down and placed a hand on the back of her head, winding his fingers into her hair.  
  
“Tron wouldn’t have lasted this long.” He would have had Quorra on her back, driving into her until the two of them were halfway to the floor. In fact, he had seen it happen. Several times.  
  
Quorra only had time for a concurring “ _Mm_ ,” before Clu pulled her down onto his cock, spreading her lips and sliding into her warm, wet mouth. Her tongue rolled over him as her lips tightened and she began to suck, drawing herself up and holding, waiting, before making the plunge back down again and leaving Clu useless to do anything but lie back and hold on. He held her in place for a moment, lifting his hips and fucking her mouth with all the effort he could muster in his current state. Soon she was back in control, arms braced beside his hips as she thrust her mouth down over the length of his shaft, taking him into the back of her throat and holding him there until he thought he might shut down again. It was quick and dirty, and Clu knew he wouldn’t have it in him to hold out for very long. When Quorra pressed her tongue to the circuit that ran the underside of his cock, up to the head, he stopped trying. He came with her mouth still wrapped around him, grunting and gasping as he held her hair twisted in his fist.  
  
“That…” Clu said, chest heaving and circuits blazing, “was a good morning.”  
  
“I think it’s Quorra’s turn,” he heard Tron say.  
  
Clu shot up from the bed and looked around the darkened room; Tron was nowhere to be found, but his gentle laughter left no mistake that he was somewhere nearby. “Stop lurking in the shadows,” Clu demanded. He leaned to the side to look past Quorra, wondering just how long the system monitor had been watching them—not that it would be the first time, but he liked to know he was putting on a show for Tron’s gratification.  
  
From the corner came a tiny buzz of sound, and then Tron’s lights flickered to life one by one, pale blue against the darkness. With the lights on, Clu suddenly had no problem telling he was there; _feeling_ his presence came as naturally as breathing, where it had been absent a nano before. A realization that bothered him, to say the least. “I didn’t know you could hide from me.”  
  
“Neither did I. But,” Tron smiled as he skulked forward and slid his hands onto the bed, knees following until he was perched next to Quorra, “now that I do, I’m sure I’ll make good use of it.”  
  
Quorra turned and wrapped her arms around Tron’s shoulders. He pulled her into a kiss, sliding his arms down her back and over the curve of her bare backside. One hand found its way between her legs and Quorra jumped a little. All the while Clu lay prone on the bed, still catching up to himself after his orgasm. He watched Tron work his fingers between Quorra’s legs, making her gasp and pant against him as her own hands grasped at the armor wrapping his torso. He pulled away from her and nodded to Clu. “He owes you one.”  
  
Clu couldn’t exactly object, and he had no real desire to. Quorra stalked across the bed like a well-practiced predator, eyes locked on his, mouth set in a feral grin. She first kissed him, leaning down to brush her breasts across his chest, making his circuits flare lavender and burn down to his groin. When she sat up, she took the pillow with her, tossing it to the floor as she turned and moved herself to kneel over him, her back against the wall at the head of the bed. Clu could feel the warmth radiating off her and it stoked him to arousal all over again. His hands came up and slowly wrapped around her thighs, pulling her down until he could press his mouth to the moist slit between her legs.  
  
Meanwhile, Tron positioned himself between Clu’s thighs—the touch of his skin indicating that he had already freed himself of the suit he was wearing before. Clu groaned when a hand closed around his shaft, pumping slowly, making him roll his hips and buck helplessly as Tron worked his other hand down. Fingers penetrated him and Clu gripped Quorra’s thighs harder. He was never ready for the sensation, the pressure; Tron’s fingers stretched and worked him expertly, urging Clu to spread his legs as he begged in moans and whimpers for Tron to stop stalling and just _fuck him_. Quorra’s hand replaced Tron’s a moment later, taking over where he had been stroking Clu’s rigid, aching dick. The warmth of her body had turned to a scalding heat that left him dizzy, trying to separate sensations as he was bombarded from every angle, face still buried between Quorra’s legs, tongue still undulating over her wet folds. When Tron withdrew his fingers Clu tensed, until a gentle hand on his stomach eased him back down again.  
  
“Relax,” Tron soothed. “Just keep going.”  
  
Quorra rocked gently as Clu’s tongue finally made its way to her clit, drawing a cry bitten back as Tron pulled her forward for a kiss. At the same time he pressed the head of his cock to Clu’s entrance, giving the administrator only a moment before he pushed inside, sliding deeper and deeper until he was seated to the base. Clu pulled away from Quorra and gasped in a deep breath; Tron always felt so _big_.  
  
Quorra let go of him and sat up. She placed her palms on his abdomen and drew her fingernails up his chest, scratching over his circuits and across his nipples. “Don’t stop.” Her voice carried all the urgency of a command, and all the desperation of a plea. “ _There_ ,” she breathed. “Just like that, just—” whatever she had been about to say turned into a throaty cry as she shuddered over him. With Tron pounding away between his legs, Clu narrowed his focus on Quorra; keeping her moaning, chasing the quiver in her thighs and the tremor that told him he was right where she needed him to be.  
  
Tron hefted one of Clu’s legs onto his shoulder and slammed forward, throwing them all off for a moment as the bed shifted with his renewed onslaught. Lips grazed Clu’s leg, a rough, warm hand returned to work his cock, and just like that the three of them found their rhythm, rocking and thrusting together atop the bed.  
  
Tron stopped as Quorra started to indicate that she was reaching her limit. Clu kept going, pushing her into her overload, working her until she doubled over, crying out and shuddering hard on top of him. Her hands dug into his skin, but the pain was distant. He didn’t care in that moment as he felt the waves of energy vibrating through her circuits. After a quiet moment she regained control and sat up, nudging Clu to give her space behind him. He shifted himself for her and rested his head on her knees. When he looked down he found Tron steadily stroking himself, watching them as they rested together.  
  
“Go ahead,” he said to Clu. His eyes lead a trail from Clu’s face down to his groin, and his neglected erection.  
  
Clu moved slowly, eyes locked on Tron’s as he reached down to take hold of himself. He started slow, with long, drawn-out strokes intended to make it last.  
  
Tron slid his tongue over his lower lip. “Faster,” he demanded quietly. When Clu obeyed, he smirked. “You want me back inside, don’t you?”  
  
Clu nodded.  
  
“Then show me.”  
  
Clu waited a moment before spreading his legs, bracing his heels against the bed as he tensed his body and stroked himself off. He wanted to close his eyes and lean back; to think about plunging deep into Quorra, sucking on her breasts and flicking his tongue across her nipples until she squirmed and mewled beneath him. Or to imagine himself with his face in Tron’s hands as the security program pounded the back of his throat. But he kept his eyes locked on Tron’s, on the smoldering blue eyes that were a nano from losing control. He stroked faster, finding just the right pace, drawing himself close to the edge. His jaw clenched and his legs shook, and just as Tron seemed unable to wait any longer he came—spilling over his own fist and onto his stomach, one heel dragging uselessly against the bed as he arched forward, eyes shut tight.  
  
He had barely come back to his senses when he heard Tron’s rough voice; “Over,” he said. “On your hands and knees.”  
  
The words bounced around amidst reordering processes, but did his best to carry out the command. He rolled himself over and struggled into position. Quorra sat before him, her breasts invitingly close. Just as he contemplated leaning forward to take advantage of their proximity, Tron drove back into place, sending Clu forward into Quorra’s arms. She held him up, one hand stroking his hair as she supported him. Tron was relentless. Clu buried his face in the crook of Quorra’s neck and wrapped one arm around her back, holding himself up with the other as Tron fucked him. _Really_ fucked him. He could hear Tron grunting with each thrust, and his fingers dug painfully into the transfers at Clu’s hips.  
  
“You can’t get enough of it, can you? I remember the nervous little admin who didn’t know how to suck a cock, and now look at you. You want it all the time. Tell me, Clu.”  
  
Clu nodded, but it wasn’t enough; Tron pulled his hand back and slapped him hard on the hip, making Clu yelp and tense under his hand. He wanted to scream _yes_ , to tell Tron he could fuck him anytime, anywhere, that he and Quorra could have him whenever and however they wanted—he just _needed it_.  
  
Tron placed his foot flat on the bed, giving himself the leverage to drive his cock into Clu’s ass harder than before. Clu wasn’t sure he could take it, but he was hardly in a position to object.  
  
Quorra continued stroking his hair, with her other hand playing over the thin circuits on his back. Her gentle touch clashed with the bruising impact of Tron’s hips against his backside, making him whimper quietly with each thrust. Finally Tron started to reach his limit; his fingers pulled at Clu’s hips, and he growled low between clenched teeth. Clu could feel him when he came; the heat filled him, spreading as Tron continued to fuck him even after he was spent. With one final, self-satisfied grunt, Tron pulled out. Clu sagged down onto the bed with his head in Quorra’s lap.  
  
Tron let out a deep breath and reached out to stroke Clu’s leg. “I’ll get you something to drink,” he said, before bounding off the bed and disappearing into the other room.  
  
Clu rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, enjoying the thrum of Quorra’s circuits against his skin. He would eventually have to talk to Tron about knowing the limitations of other programs.  
  
And after that, he would ask Flynn why a security program could run harder and longer than the administrator of the whole damn Grid.

  
_____________  
  
  
  
Tron finished the playback and tapped his way back out of the interface. He kept Clu’s disc for a moment, rolling it back and forth between his palms before finally tossing it across the space between them. Clu caught it and docked it on its port, glad to have an excuse to look away. Tron clearly enjoyed watching what had transpired in his absence. If Clu wasn’t careful, he would end up giving him a more detailed replay. The events after his return still echoed in his memory, surfacing as an ache that spread from his ass out to his arms. He probably should have taken the time to fix his bruises.  
  
“You should come over here and show me what else you two did,” Tron said with a wink.  
  
Clu frowned; he wasn’t getting dragged into another sexual encounter in the arena just because Tron had a thing for taking risks. Especially after the overzealous Welcome Home fuck he’d endured. “I just did.”  
  
“Not the same thing. It’s fine, though. I’ll just ask Quorra later.” Tron rolled onto his back and then shot to his feet with a quick rising handspring, leaving Clu sitting on the floor of the arena box. After a short pause he gave Clu a nod. “On your feet, portal’s open.”  
  
Clu spread his hands palms-up and looked around at the invisible spectators. “Why can’t I _ever_ tell when the portal opens?”  
  
“It’s not on the Grid,” Tron offered.  
  
“You knew.”  
  
Tron reached down and hoisted Clu up onto his feet with one hand. “No, I received six simultaneous security reports from my team, because they can’t coordinate their feedback and send a single alert.”  
  
“You really should have them work on that,” Clu said. He followed Tron to the door and out onto the primary arena floor, where the command ship was already on standby. “Imagine the chaos if all twenty-nine system monitors reported in at once.”  
  
Tron looked over his shoulder and laughed. “I don’t have to.”  
  
Their flight was brief, and Flynn was there to meet them when they landed in the city square. Clu couldn’t help a little bit of excitement at the arrival of his user after so many cycles. Things had been quiet except for a slight rise in rogue programs, which was only slightly more than usual; the Grid had progressed along the path Flynn set for it without complications; and past tensions between the Basics and Isos had all but disappeared after Radia’s appointment to co-admin. He wanted to _show_ Flynn all the progress they had made. He took the stairs two at a time down to the street, ignoring Tron’s mocking and the concerned gasp from Jarvis, who had been commanded to stay on the ship. His boots had barely touched the pavement when he realized someone else was standing beside Flynn.  
  
“What is _that?_ ” he heard Jarvis blurt out, followed by Tron storming up the steps and forcing him back into the ship. Clu didn’t turn around to watch; his eyes were locked on the little… _thing_ standing next to Flynn. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to think of a way to repeat Jarvis’ question without offending his user. Eventually he gave up.  
  
“Flynn, what… is it?” he asked. He was still staring at its little round face and disproportionately large eyes.  
  
Flynn laughed and put a hand on its undersized shoulder. “This is Sam!”  
  
“Why?” He could tell everyone around them had ceased whatever business occupied them before the commotion had drawn their attention; he didn’t even need to look, feedback from the surrounding Grid space told him not a single program was moving within visual range, and word of Flynn’s arrival, as well as the presence of another user—a tiny, malformed user—was already spreading beyond that.  
  
Apparently Flynn found the whole situation very amusing. “Man, I didn’t think you’d take it this hard. You know what kids are, I’ve told you!”  
  
“ _Why?_ ” Clu repeated. It—Sam’s head was too big for his body, and his limbs were too long. Clu wanted to grab his disc and fix him. Of course he didn’t even _have_ a disc, and Clu could sense that, too.  
  
“Why did I bring him with me?” Flynn asked. “Well, I told him I’d take him, and his birthday seemed as good a time as any. Say hi, kiddo.” He gave Sam a gentle nudge that sent the “kid” forward a couple of unsteady steps. Sam seemed at the same time frightened and awestruck, and Clu couldn’t say he didn’t sympathize.  
  
“Hi,” Sam said, quickly lifting one hand in a vague greeting. He looked like he wanted to be more comfortable than he felt. His eyes quickly scanned over Clu, taking in the bright white lines of the arena suit he had been wearing for the practice match, before darting to Tron standing off to the side. When his beady little gaze fell on the prominent T circuits, Sam’s eyes lit up. “You’re _Tron_ ,” he said in hushed reverence, as though it were some great revelation. “ _Really Tron_. Right?”  
  
Tron didn’t reply. He seemed to be locked in the process of gauging whether or not Sam was a threat. Admittedly, Clu had his own concerns that the user’s improper parameters might have an effect on some programs after prolonged, direct contact.  
  
All hesitance on Sam’s part seemed to evaporate once he received confirmation from Flynn that Tron was definitely Tron. “So, can we do light cycles?” he asked, looking rapidly between Flynn and Tron. “Like real light cycles? And discs?”  
  
Flynn chuckled at his son’s enthusiasm. “I’m sure you can get a ride, at least. Maybe Tron’ll take you?” He looked at Tron, obviously waiting for a response. When the system monitor only squinted at Sam and shrugged, he moved on. “First let’s show you around, get you a disc. You can even have your own suit if you want. How’s that sound?” As he talked to Sam, Flynn stepped forward and put a hand on Clu’s shoulder, giving him a quick shake, and linking the three of them in what Clu felt was an incredibly awkward half-embrace. “Finally got everyone together. This should be fun!”

  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu sat across from Flynn in the back of the limo, with Sam and Tron riding outside, on Tron’s light cycle. Flynn had told Tron to take it slow—proving how little he knew the program—and it took a few frantic stops to clarify exactly what he had in mind, as even the most ineffective speeds seemed too fast for Flynn’s comfort. Tron was barely idling the bike by the time he finally received approval to drive.  
  
With Sam on the Grid, Clu felt greatly displaced. He wanted to ask if it meant Flynn wouldn’t have time for _him_ , but something told him that was ridiculous, and he felt a little pang of shame for even entertaining the idea. Odd and gangly as he was, Sam was a user, he was a user _created_ by Clu’s user—there was no precedent for that in any accessible memory. Sam was clearly something special, he just couldn’t figure out why Flynn had screwed up so badly when he made him, especially after doing so well with Clu.  
  
“Why is he so small?” Clu asked. He was watching Sam and Tron outside the limo, trying not to be obvious about it but sure he was failing nevertheless.  
  
“He’ll get bigger,” Flynn replied. “He’s only ten, after all. I mean,” he shifted in the seat and propped his legs up next to Clu. “I hope he’ll get bigger. His mom’s pretty short.”  
  
Clu looked over at his user. “Jordan.”  
  
“That’s her.” Flynn paused, crossing and uncrossing his arms repeatedly as he looked around the vehicle. “I had to tell her. About… all this.” He gestured to the space around him. “I couldn’t take Sam here and _not_ tell her where we were going. It seemed like too big a risk. You know?”  
  
Clu nodded to affirm that he was following the conversation, though he didn’t actually understand. “Was it a problem?” he asked.  
  
“Nah, she took it pretty well, all things considered. I mean, it took like a month before she actually believed me, but she knows me. She knows I wouldn’t lie to her.”  
  
That seemed to Clu like it was exactly what he had done, even if it was a lie of omission, but he said nothing. Users had their own set of customs and rules, and he had learned over time that he usually couldn’t apply his sense of logic to the things Flynn told him. Flynn called that _progress_ , but Clu only accepted it as a natural limitation that could not be changed. He appreciated the compliment, though. “And you said he’ll change his physical parameters at a later date? What is the trigger for that upgrade? Why can’t he do it now?”  
  
“It’s called growing up. All users do it. Man, you’re really hung up on this.” Flynn sounded amused, but his tone carried an undercurrent of concern that Clu could perceive, though he didn’t really appreciate its source. He was only asking questions.  
  
“He seems inconveniently undersized.”  
  
“Trust me,” Flynn explained, “it’s normal.” He leaned his foot to the side and tapped Clu’s hip. “That reminds me, don’t, uh, don’t mention whatever it is you and Tron have going on with that Iso girl, okay? Not around Sam. I’d rather not have the talk this early in the game.”  
  
“Quorra?”  
  
“I just think Sam is a little young, and it ain’t the seventies anymore.”  
  
Clu started to ask what he meant, but he decided to file it away for later. “I’ll keep it to myself,” he said instead. “You should talk to Tron, though. He’s been lining up time with sirens, waiting for you to return.”  
  
“Yeah,” Flynn chuckled nervously and scratched the back of his neck. “Probably shouldn’t mention that around Sam, either.”

  
  
_____________

 

Tron was almost certain that he had never been jealous of another program since the day he was compiled, but he would have given anything in that moment to trade places with Clu inside the limo. Sam was ungainly on the light cycle, and he kept leaning forward, forcing Tron to constantly readjust his own weight so they didn’t topple over. It was bad enough he could have walked faster than they were riding. Sam kept asking him to activate the bike’s light wall, and for a while it seemed like nothing would dissuade the miniature user from that fixation. He couldn’t make the kid understand that leaving a light wall in the middle of the street would block traffic, create unnecessary congestion and chaos, and probably kill a lot of programs—not to mention piss off Clu. He was starting to think Sam just didn’t care, when something else finally caught the boy’s attention.  
  
“What’s _that?_ ” Sam asked, giving no indication what he was referring to. “Can we go up there?”  
  
“Where is there?” Tron asked. He didn’t bother trying to hide his aggravation, mostly because it completely escaped Sam’s notice.  
  
“That tower.” Sam leaned to the right and pointed up, making Tron scramble to keep the bike from following him and going down on its side. “The really tall one.”  
  
“That’s the End of Line Club,” Tron said. “You like sirens?”  
  
Sam twisted around to look back at him. “What are sirens?”  
  


_____________  
  
  
  
  
“And then Flynn sent you here?”  
  
Tron nodded. He was stretched out along the edge of a rooftop, his head resting in Quorra’s lap. She had a data pad in one hand; something Radia had asked her to look into concerning the missing programs. He had tried to explain that programs went rogue, lost their way—it was normal. They were eventually recovered and their glitches rectified, or they stumbled into something they couldn’t handle and ended up in a pile of cubes. It wasn’t anything to worry about, but since the Sea of Simulation had stopped producing Isos, every little red flag in the system seemed to sound an alarm from Arjia. Radia had grown somewhat paranoid over the cycles, afraid of her own shadow; whatever might have taken her from the isolation of the Nexus before the events in the Outlands, she now delegated to Jalen and Quorra, instead. An abnormally elevated number of Isos among the last cycle’s stray programs hadn’t helped matters.  
  
“You said Sam was his son, but I don’t understand that concept,” Quorra continued. “Users can create other users? Like they create programs?”  
  
Tron rolled onto his back and pushed the pad out of the way, but Quorra turned to the side and continued working. “I’m starting to think I understand users a lot less than I used to,” he said. “You should probably ask Clu about this stuff.”  
  
“I think he’s getting tired of explaining it. And from what you told me, I don’t think he understands what Sam is any better than you do.”  
  
Tron hummed quietly in agreement. He thought about the situation, picking through everything about Sam he could process. He didn’t understand Flynn’s concerns at all. “Maybe Sam is incomplete.”  
  
Quorra shrugged. “Maybe. That would explain his size. Tron, look at this.” She turned the pad around to let Tron see the map she had finished plotting. “The figures for programs lost and recovered is nearly constant over the past three hundred cycles. Rogue programs over the last half cycle are consistent with those numbers.”  
  
Her statements matched what Tron could immediately draw up from his own memory, without delving into archived system figures. “Why the concern, then?” he asked.  
  
“Because I’m only counting Basics. The numbers from the last half cycle triple when you factor in Isos. Those sixteen missing Isos are also twice the total of all known rogue Isos ever recorded in your security logs.” She turned and tapped her finger against the pad, right in the center of the map. “This map shows the last known coordinates where Grid synchronization registered the missing Isos. They were all in Epsilon.”  
  
Something about the points indicating the missing programs had Tron itching to reach for his disc. “That’s not normal,” he said, staring at the projection. “I should have noticed.”  
  
“Should we go investigate?” Quorra asked.  
  
“I have a team on the way now. We’ll meet them there.”  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
“I think you’re a little young for discs,” Flynn said to a clearly disappointed Sam. “It’s not like playing a game at the arcade, kiddo.”  
  
“I know, dad,” Sam complained, “but it’s boring just watching everything.”  
  
Flynn laughed and turned to look at Clu. “You think it’s safe to take him out on the light cycle track?”  
  
“Maybe,” Clu said. “Without Tron here his chances of avoiding serious injury are a lot better.”  
  
Flynn gave him a critical glance. “C’mon, he’s not as bad as he used to be. And he’s calmed down a lot since things got quiet around here.”  
  
As Flynn spoke, Sam reached back to remove his own disc. He balanced it on one finger and began twirling it in a circle, eventually dropping it, where it rolled away. He hesitated for a moment before running after it.  
  
“You’re not around Tron as much as I am,” Clu reminded Flynn. He watched Sam from the corner of his eye while they talked; the boy was halfway down the street, still chasing his disc. He finally jumped on it, slamming the ring down on its side with a loud _clap_. Clu distantly wondered if it could stand up to so much abuse. Based on his behavior so far, Sam was likely to dish out a lot more before the end of his stay.  
  
A tinny buzz threaded its way into the general feed looping status reports through the back of Clu’s mind. He tried to isolate it, but he couldn’t focus past Flynn’s voice and the sound of Sam’s feet slapping against the pavement as he ran back to join them.  
  
“`…005, 014, 022, derezzed…system monitors 005, 014…`”  
  
“He has a lot of energy. I mean look at what he does. Kids are the same, man. They both just need—”  
  
“Flynn, stop.” Clu put up a hand to silence his user. “The security channel is breaking into my status feed.”  
  
“What? How?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Sam had inserted himself between Clu and Flynn in the sudden silence. “Dad, dad. Dad. Can we go—dad, hey—”  
  
“Sam, quiet,” Flynn demanded. He pushed Sam aside and watched Clu as he struggled to separate the signals.  
  
“`System monitors 005, 008, 013, 014, 022, 027, derezzed… additional system monitors dispatched. Tron dispatched. System monitors 005, 008, 013, 014, 022, 027, derezzed…`”  
  
Tron’s security programs were being slaughtered, and someone was trying to extend the call for help. “Get sentries,” he called to Jarvis, who had been hovering off to the side, engrossed in staring at his own feet. “Epsilon sector, two squadrons.”  
  
“Clu, what’s happening?” Flynn asked. “Is it bugs?”  
  
Sam made an unpleasant face. “Bugs?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Clu said. “An entire team of monitors just got derezzed. Wait here.”  
  
Flynn shook his head. “I’ll come with you.”  
  
“Dad, can I come?”  
  
Both Clu and Flynn looked down at Sam. “You should stay here,” Clu said, intending it for both of them. If Flynn was worried about Sam being injured on a light cycle, there was no way the tiny user belonged in a battle where Tron’s own security programs couldn’t handle themselves.  
  
“That’s not fair!” Sam shouted. He pulled away from Flynn’s grip on his sleeve and stormed over to a wall, where he slid down to the ground and sat with his arms around his knees. “It’s _my_ birthday.”  
  
Clu ignored him. “I’ll be back, stay with Jarvis.”  
  
He had his baton out, rezzing up a bike before Flynn had a chance to respond. Whatever was happening in the other sector, it was bad; in early cycles they might have lost monitors to a gridbug swarm, but not a whole team, not so fast.  
  
“`System monitors 003, 007, derezzed… Additional system monitors dispatched.`”  
  
Clu instantly recognized the newest numbers added to the looping derez report; they were on Tron’s team.  
  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
  
Quorra could barely see past the spray of voxels and the blur of motion coming at her from every direction; someone bumped into her from behind, only to dissolve like liquid when she turned to see who it was. It happened so fast the program’s disc was still spinning an energy edge when it hit the ground. Tron was fighting to her left, and badly injured—one arm hung limp at his side with a chunk missing just below the shoulder, and he had a wide gash in his abdomen that would render him useless if he kept fighting much longer. Another program stumbled past with half his face gone, clutching at his head as he tripped blindly through the battle. All around them shapes reached out from the ground and the walls—hands and empty faces in dull shades that seemed made to mimic skin. They grabbed at legs, pulling programs into gaping maws that arched out of the pavement like some kind of nightmare. Someone screamed, and Quorra turned to see one of the programs on Tron’s team ripped in half, pulled apart by two sets of hands that seemed to be nothing more than circuits.  
  
It was a massacre, and she couldn’t stop it. _Tron_ couldn’t stop it. Their discs did nothing; they simply stopped on impact, and the cutting edge caused no harm to the creatures. Some of the monitors were fighting hand-to-hand, but they were losing just as fast as the ones who kept trying to make do with normal weapons. Where discs scraped skin of the creatures it only seemed to make them burn brighter. As though they were feeding off the whirling energy.  
  
A disc flashed by, and Quorra turned to find its owner; Clu had arrived with a host of sentries, outfitted for battle and brandishing riot gear she was sure hadn’t seen use in at least a couple hundred cycles. She spared a moment to wonder how he had been alerted to their predicament, before a dark hand reached up from the pavement, its clawed fingers grasping blindly for her ankle. She jumped out of the way and stumbled into the program with the half-face. He was still trying to fight.  
  
“Tron!” Clu called out. He pushed his way through the melee to reach the security program and threw himself against Tron’s opponent, knocking it back and sending it scurrying into the ground. Once it was gone he wrapped an arm around Tron’s waist before he could collapse. “What’s happening here?” he demanded.  
  
Quorra made her way over to them and grabbed Tron’s good arm, pulling it up over her shoulder as they retreated to the back of the battle. “They ambushed the first team,” she said. “We got here just as the last two went down, and then they turned on us.”  
  
Clu turned and slammed his disc into a hand as it reached out to swipe at Quorra from a nearby wall. “What are they?”  
  
“Nothing—nothing I’ve ever seen before. Discs don’t work, they just bounce back,” Tron said. “I don’t know why.”  
  
“ _What?_ ”  
  
“You heard me! Our discs don't do anything, and—Clu, I think they just _feed_ the damn things, they start glowing when you hit them, like they’re absorbing the energy. It doesn’t make any sense.”  
  
Quorra could see Clu processing the information, trying to think of a way to salvage the battle before it turned against them further. “Retreat,” he said, quietly at first. Then louder, “Retreat! Fall back to the center of the city!”  
  
“What if they keep coming?” Quorra asked. “We can’t stop them, we can’t keep them out.”  
  
Clu only shook his head. He let go of Tron’s waist and slipped out from under his sagging weight, letting Quorra lead him to the back of the line of sentries. He waved her off with Tron, standing with the remaining monitors and the wall of sentries as they backed up, ready to fight their way to a safer position if necessary. The creatures hadn’t stopped their attack, they hadn’t even slowed with the arrival of more combatants. It was only more chaotic, and the new arrivals died twice as fast.  
  
“What—what the hell are those things?” It sounded like Clu, but the voice had come from behind her; dread welling within her, Quorra turned to find Flynn standing at the mouth of the street, with a strangely small program next to him.

No—not a program. _Sam Flynn_.  
  
“Get out of here!” she shouted. She knew Clu was too far away to help his user, and Tron was on the verge of collapse.  
  
“Where’s Clu?” Flynn demanded. He kept coming, kept walking toward them. Quorra couldn’t move to stop him with Tron weighing her down, but she couldn’t abandon him, either. “Program, what are those things?”  
  
Tron struggled to get his feet under him, using his good arm to wave Flynn away. “Flynn,” he groaned. “It’s not safe.”  
  
Behind them, Clu and the others had barely made it half the length of the street, still engaged in a desperate fight to retreat. A program to Clu’s side was pulled off his feet and dragged across the pavement into a wall, where his lower half disappeared into jagged, cavernous jaws. The other half shattered on impact with the wall when the mouth snapped shut. Quorra couldn’t tell if it had been a sentry or a system monitor; they were all dying the same. She looked up the street to find Jarvis standing horror-struck, staring at the carnage in clear terror. “Jarvis,” she called. “ _Jarvis!_ ” When he finally unfroze himself, he started to back away. “Take Flynn,” Quorra commanded. Jarvis was under no authority of hers, but she had a feeling he would follow her instructions, given the circumstances. “Take him away from here, to—” She stopped herself. Where would be safe?  
  
A low rumble began to permeate the sounds of the battle behind them, and Quorra felt an accompanying tremor work its way across the ground. Another followed on the heels of the first, and then everything seemed to go quiet, the last sounds of whirring discs disappearing as they echoed between the nearby structures. The rumble grew louder, and with it the tremors grew stronger, threatening to put Quorra off her feet as she struggled to keep Tron on his. She looked from Flynn to Jarvis, and in a moment of understanding Jarvis nodded, walking backwards across the shaking ground as he dragged Flynn with him. Without warning one of the ground tiles collapsed, disappearing into whatever empty space was below the foundation of the city. Another followed a nano later, then another, and then they were falling too fast to count, taking programs with them wherever they were too slow to get out of the way. Everyone scrambled for safety, running in whatever direction would take them away from the sinking ground. Quorra hefted Tron and made to follow Jarvis and Flynn up the street; as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t spare the time to turn back and look for Clu.  
  
“Wait,” Flynn shouted. He tore himself away from Jarvis and flew past Quorra and Tron. “Sam? _Where is Sam?_ ”  
  
“Dad!” Sam was crouched in the space between two buildings, huddled with a group of programs who had fled the crumbling street. There was no way to reach him without crossing a dangerous gap with no apparent bottom.  
  
The collapse of the tiles stopped finally, and for a moment nothing moved. No one stirred from where they had run in their mad dash for cover. Sam stood and started taking shaky steps toward his father, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Stay here, user,” one of the programs said.  
  
Flynn was near-frantic. He paced the edge of the hole, cursing quietly and dragging his hands through his hair. “Sam, wait there, don’t move!” he yelled.  
  
Then another sound filled the silence, and even Flynn froze in place. It was a deep, reverberating groan that shook Quorra through to her very core. Something crashed down onto the street, and she looked up to see the skyscraper looming above them as it swayed on its foundation, the sleek black siding breaking away in chunks and creating deadly missiles with no target. A piece fell in the alley where Sam and the others were taking shelter, spraying the area with green voxels as it obliterated two programs on the spot. The white frame of the skyscraper’s outer shell flickered and snapped as it started to collapse, bearing down on top of them. Everyone ran; they leapt over the smaller holes in the street, scrambled across the piles of rubble, and pushed past one another in a frantic rush for survival. Quorra ran, too. She pulled Tron along with her, focused on getting as far away from the collapsing skyscraper as possible. She took a chance and looked over her shoulder as she fled, only to find Flynn still standing at the edge of the broken street, trying to find a way to reach his son. “Take him,” Quorra said to Jarvis. She shifted Tron’s weight into Jarvis’ open arms and turned back to get Flynn. “Flynn, we have to go,” she shouted. “Now!”  
  
“I won’t leave my son!” Flynn shouted over his shoulder.

“You have to come with me!”  
  
He tried to brace himself, but Quorra pulled harder than he could resist. When standing his ground failed, he turned and attempted to pry her hand from his arm. “You don’t understand!”  
  
Over on the other side of the street Sam was wailing, still crouched against the wall of the building. Flynn tried to throw himself across the gap, but Quorra held him back. “It’s too wide,” she warned him. “You will _not_ make it!”  
  
“I have to try!”  
  
Quorra started to tell Flynn she would carry him to safety, if she had to, but she never had a chance to speak; a piece of the skyscraper broke off as it began to tilt too far to sustain itself upright any longer. It collided with the roof of a smaller building as it fell, shattering at the top and raining jagged debris all around them. Quorra only had time to register the impact as something struck her, before she was forced into a shutdown.  
  
  
  
_____________

  
  
He heard Quorra shouting orders to Jarvis, trying to make him take Flynn away from the battle. Clu wanted to be angry that Jarvis had allowed Flynn to leave the safety of the city’s upper levels in the first place, but he knew his own user; he knew that Flynn would eventually get his way, even if it meant putting himself at considerable risk. Jarvis could place himself bodily in Flynn’s path and he would only wind up pushed aside by some script Flynn whipped up without even trying. Clu had hoped to have things under control before that happened, but apparently he overestimated the distraction Jarvis would provide.  
  
When the shaking started Clu could hardly spare a thought for it, so preoccupied was he with keeping himself alive, and out of clawed hands and jaws. They were roughly the same size and shape as programs, but some of them were elongated or malformed, with flat skin in varying shades of gray—if they had skin at all. More than a few were composed mostly of circuits, or held together by them in places where their bodies had crumbled away, or simply never formed. Whatever they were, they obviously had the same basic parameters as the rest of the programs on the Grid. Every one of them was circuited in white, too. Clu tried to ignore what logic told him that meant.  
  
He was locked in a life-or-death struggle with one of the creatures when the first tile fell. His disc had lodged in its chest, doing no damage, and in a panic he gripped its arms to hold it at bay. The thing had no mouth to speak of; below its empty, lifeless eyes and where its mouth _should_ have been, the face was broken and gaping open, revealing a mouth-like maw full of teeth and ragged voxels. It snapped at him and thrashed in his grip, but he held on tight, determined to avoid becoming the next meal amid the frenzy.  
  
Someone shouted, and Clu tried to focus on the voice; from the corner of his eye he saw a nearby sentry simply _drop_ , disappearing into a black hole below his feet. The next tile over went a moment later, and Clu knew he wouldn’t have long to move before he followed. With a roar of frustration he shoved the creature back, where it fell to the pavement and phased into the black tile, saving itself from the collapsing street. With the immediate threat gone he turned to find a safe avenue of escape—too late, as the tile beneath him gave way. He dropped, clawing desperately at the edge of the nearest tile. With one hand on the edge he started to pull himself back up, and then _that_ tile collapsed, and Clu was falling, tumbling through darkness as his connection to the Grid was severed and his every sense went dead. He couldn’t tell how fast he was going, or where the ground would meet him and shatter his body into countless tiny cubes. The faint light of the street above disappeared, leaving him disoriented and panicked. He tried to put his hands out, hoping to find something he could grab to stop his fall, but the inky blackness was just as empty as it felt, wrapping around him and dimming even the white glow of his circuits.  
  
Flynn had never told him what was under the city. There was no reason to ask. There was the Grid, the Outlands, and the Sea. Nothing else mattered or required consideration. Nothing else existed, as far as Clu was concerned. Suddenly he regretted that ignorance and extreme lack of foresight. He would die down there, and he wasn’t even sure what _there_ was.  
  
When his shoulder brushed against something solid he flailed toward it, reaching for the relative security of anything but the darkness. He expected to grab hold of it and come to a hard stop, possibly a painful stop—but instead he simply… stopped. It reminded him of the time Tron had attempted to teach him the “art” of fighting through the gravity shifts in the arena. He had done about as well as expected, slamming face-first into the ground every single time the floor and ceiling reversed themselves. The sensation of holding the rock—and it was clearly a rock, judging from the uneven surface—floating there in the nothingness, was much like what Clu had experienced in that moment just before the effect of the gravity shift took hold and brought him crashing back down.  
  
A deafening boom sounded from somewhere in the distance, and Clu flinched, prepared for an impact. When nothing came he relaxed a bit, noting that the rock in his hand hadn’t so much as shaken. Wherever he was, whatever rock he was holding, he seemed to be physically removed from the sound. While it didn’t guarantee he was safe from whatever had caused it, he felt marginally more secure.  
  
Some time passed before Clu started to worry that he was dangerously vulnerable to the creatures if they decided to return. He was, as far as he knew, floating in a hole in the ground. They could pass through solid surfaces, which meant they would have no trouble reaching him if they wanted a quick, helpless snack. He didn’t even have his disc; it was back up on the street, unless the creature he had left it lodged in was able to phase it into the pavement as well. Not that his disc would do much good, anyway.  
  
As he contemplated how he would get himself out of a completely unknown situation, Clu felt something brush against his cheek. He carefully reached out with one hand and grabbed at whatever had touched him. Bringing it down into the low light of his chest circuits he realized he was holding voxels. Blue voxels. Pieces of someone. He flung them away from himself with a disgusted sound, and wiped his hand on his side to get the invisible taint of deresolution off his glove. It took a moment to register that the voxels had been floating, too. They had simply drifted toward him, which meant that he was not actually falling—something he had suspected, but been unable to confirm.  
  
In fact, it seemed nothing was falling.  
  
“Where the hell _am I?_ ” he wondered aloud.


	2. Chapter 2

Tron slumped over in the chair of Clu’s command ship, one arm wrapped around his wounded midsection, while the other lay draped across the arm of the chair. He couldn’t move it anymore. Whenever he took a breath he heard the scraping of his insides and the occasional glassy tinkle of pieces falling out of him. He tried not to think about it.  
  
“Set him down there,” Quorra commanded one of the sentries. She had assumed control in Clu’s absence, and Tron was more than happy to order his remaining monitors and Clu’s few surviving sentries to follow her without question while he was incapacitated.  
  
The sentries marched past and carefully set Flynn down in a clear space beside the window. He was breathing, which was a lot more than could be said for most who had been there when the tower collapsed. Tron and Jarvis were clear of the falling debris when it began to rain down on the street in earnest, but Quorra and Flynn had been waylaid by a piece of the tower’s upper spire. The impact knocked Quorra against a wall and threw her into a reboot. Flynn wasn’t so lucky. He was pierced through the midsection by a piece of the façade, unable to move. It was Jarvis who ran back to get him, which, to be honest, Tron was still struggling to believe.  
  
Dyson had picked up Quorra on a wildly transmitted signal from Tron. He was one of the few system monitors to make it out of the battle alive, as a result. No one knew what had become of Sam. That was news Tron wasn’t looking forward to sharing with Flynn when—and if—he woke up. He frowned and looked away from the user’s unconscious body, to where Dyson was slumped against the wall. He seemed on the verge of collapse himself. “How are you holding up?”  
  
“Better than you,” Dyson grunted. “Apart from the other side of my face, of course.” He gestured to where his right eye should have been and gave Tron a lopsided smile. “How does it look?”  
  
Tron chuckled. He lost some of his stomach for the effort. “It’s an improvement,” he replied.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Pain shot up through Tron’s chest, and he sucked in a breath. He would derez, eventually, even if they managed to patch his damage. Flynn could fix him with no trouble, but he was currently lying half-dead on the floor, and the only person who knew how users worked was missing, presumed derezzed. All of Tron’s attempts to ping Clu had gone unanswered. When he did a system-wide sweep—at the cost of pain that made derezzing seem infinitely more appealing—the response on Clu’s location came back inconclusive. He wasn’t on the Grid anymore, at least according to the Grid.  
  
Tron leaned back slowly, wincing at every tug to his wounds. He let his head fall back against the headrest and closed his eyes; no one could know how much he feared what had become of Clu. Not just for the sake of his own pride, but for the security and order of the Grid itself. They followed Quorra for now, but with Clu missing and Flynn out of service, the chain of command marked him as the one in charge of maintaining functionality until a new administrator was rezzed, or the previous one recovered. Until he collapsed into a pile of useless cubes, he was running things, whether or not he wanted the job. Falling to pieces—figuratively, in this case—would not help them recover from the blow struck by the creatures.  
  
“What _were_ those things?” Dyson asked, obviously sensing Tron’s tentative access to the new file in the security logs. “They looked just—”  
  
“They looked just like programs,” Tron finished for him. “I know.”  
  
“I couldn’t get a solid read. Couldn’t even get a hit on them.”  
  
Quorra interrupted their conversation, leaning over the back of the chair to put a gentle hand on Tron’s good arm. “All the survivors are on the ship,” she told him quietly. “We only recovered eight discs.”  
  
Tron curled his good arm into a fist and clenched it tight. The discs would have allowed Flynn to rerez the monitors and sentries who had been killed in the fight, but only if he could actually _access_ them. They wouldn’t be the same programs, not really, but they would be alive. Without the discs they were gone—loose data scattered around the system and irretrievable. Tron tried not to show his disappointment; he had lost a lot of his monitors in that fight. If the creatures came back, the few remaining who could fight wouldn’t be able to stop them from tearing through the city. Not that they did much good anyway.  
  
Quorra turned to Jarvis. “How is Flynn doing?” she asked gently.  
  
Jarvis’ hands were covered in crusted red blood, and the wound in Flynn’s stomach only seemed to keep producing more and more as time went on. He was starting to lose some of his color. “I can’t tell,” Jarvis said. He looked down at his hands and seemed on the verge of hysterics. “I don’t know how he works, I can’t read his disc—he’s not a program, he’s… I don’t know what to _do_ ,” he said anxiously. “If Clu were here—”  
  
“We can’t let Flynn die,” Tron said, cutting him off as much for his own sake as to forestall a breakdown. He didn’t want to think about Clu. Not until he could actually do something. “If we take him to the portal, could he fix himself outside the system?” He looked to Quorra, but she only shrugged and returned his helpless stare.  
  
“How would we even get him into the portal?” Dyson asked. “It’s not safe for us to go near it.”  
  
Tron was surprised, and slightly annoyed, to hear one of his men spouting the kind of silly tales that he expected from much simpler functions. “That’s just a superstition,” he said bitterly. It was perfectly safe to go _near_ the portal. Trying to walk into it was another matter entirely.  
  
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to move him,” Jarvis said. He was probably right; using their own bodies as a guide, they had tried to do their best for Flynn, applying pressure to the wound to keep all his pieces together, but every time they moved him it only resulted in the loss of more blood. The journey to the portal would mean flying over the Sea of Simulation, and that was never a smooth ride. The sea kicked up bursts of air that created currents along the single light rail. If they were lucky, Flynn would survive the trip, but no one could say for sure that bringing him to the portal would mean saving him. It wasn’t worth the risk.  
  
Jarvis slumped down on the floor beside Flynn, looking utterly defeated. “We can’t do anything without the administrator,” he lamented.  
  
Tron looked away. There was no point answering him, they all knew he was right.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Panic hadn’t helped, and curiosity wasn’t getting him anywhere, so Clu settled on mild aggravation, instead. He had realized at some point—there were no system timestamps to determined exactly _when_ he came to this conclusion—that he could pull himself onto the surface of the rock and stand up. Which meant he was standing where he had previously been floating. So he had been floating upside down. Maybe. Flynn’s final iteration of the system had included gravity conditions comparable to what he experienced in his own world, which meant programs were bound to those same physical laws as users. It was an unnecessary and completely cosmetic design feature, intended solely for Flynn’s comfort, but as a result Clu had never known anything different. With the exception of certain games, most notably Disc Wars, he had no knowledge of a situation in which a complete reversal or disregard for the rules of the axes on which they operated could be so casually brought about.  
  
He had walked around his tiny world of rock approximately fifty-three times, according to data set by the first circuit, which had familiarized him with all the contours of the ground beneath his feet. In user terms it was roughly seventeen feet in diameter. He gave up trying to measure its surface by his own methods, instead defaulting to Flynn’s standards. It was oblong, and very uneven in most places. There was also nothing else on it but him. He thought his shoulder had brushed against something else during his thirty-sixth circuit, but when he reached out, all he encountered was empty space.  
  
That was also his current working theory regarding his whereabouts. Flynn enjoyed doing as little as possible, so it made sense that he would carve out whatever was necessary within the system, leave some to spare in the event of necessary expansion, and then simply ignore the rest. If the rest included empty space, a formless void of data where not even stray code coalesced, then it was possible Clu had fallen down there. It didn’t change anything, of course, but it was nice and vaguely comforting to put a tentative name to the darkness around him.  
  
He sat down and started tracing his fingers over the circuit on his left boot. At some point he would need energy. He could only operate autonomously from the Grid for so long without it, and after that, he would simply shut down and derez. No one would ever know where he was, or what had become of him. They would probably assume he had fallen with the others when the street collapsed, but he would give a personal upgrade to any program brave enough to venture off the Grid into unknown space looking for one stray admin. Even Tron wasn’t that foolish.  
  
Clu thought of the others… If he had survived the fall, then it was possible other programs were down there too, floating around aimlessly with him. He knew at least one was derezzed, and finding the rest would be difficult, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done. Anything was possible, Flynn had once told him.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“Radia is co-admin.”  
  
“She isn’t like Clu, Tron. She doesn’t have the knowledge Flynn gave him.”  
  
They were gathered around Flynn’s still-unconscious body, arguing quietly over the correct course of action to save the user from a slow death. Tron and Dyson wanted to take him to Radia, to see if she could help him. Quorra was adamantly against it. Jarvis still thought he might be able to do something, but his efforts hadn’t amounted to much more than extended panic and frantic pacing.  
  
“Clu _is_ the system, and Radia sits in Arjia plucking all the strings of code that make up its framework. If any of his knowledge passed through her web at some point, she will still have it. She might know some way to help Flynn. It’s the only chance, for him and for Clu,” Tron explained, careful to avoid accusing Radia of spying on her fellow administrator while he pleaded for Quorra’s help. “Do you want to just let him die?” He didn’t clarify which _him_ he meant.  
  
Quorra inhaled until it drew her shoulders up tight, and then let it out as a long sigh. “Let me ask her before we take Flynn there. It won’t waste as much time as it would if we took him and there was nothing she could do to help,” she said, adding the second part quickly when Tron started to object.  
  
Dyson leaned forward on his knee, into Tron’s field of vision. “I’ll go with her. You stay here, with Flynn.”  
  
There was no way Tron could reasonably object to his offer. He felt compelled to represent Flynn’s interests himself, but even moving from the chair to the floor had caused him a great deal of pain, and stretched the edges of his wound. He wouldn’t be able to march around the Grid and stride through Arjia like Clu always did. He was weak, and growing weaker. “Thank you,” he said instead. “Keep them safe.”  
  
“Them?”  
  
“Take Jarvis, too.” Tron kept his voice low. “If he doesn’t stop pacing, I may derez us both.”  
  
Dyson gave him a half-smile and a nod before rising to his feet. “We’ll take light jets. I think the less time spent on the ground, the better.”  
  
The idea of Jarvis on a light jet was mildly amusing, but the nervous little program had surprised Tron once already. He nodded his approval to Dyson and leaned back against the side of the command chair. The simple act of stretching his legs felt like ripping out his own voxels, and he clenched his jaw to keep from crying out in pain. He didn’t have long.  
  
Quorra followed Dyson from the bridge, with Jarvis trailing behind and casting glances back at Flynn and Tron. Their absence left him alone with the user. And very alone with his own thoughts.  
  
He wasn’t afraid of being derezzed. The risk of death was a natural part of his purpose, intrinsically tied to his entire reason for being. His user had made him to protect the system, and he would do that until he couldn’t stand and fight or even hold a disc. He wasn’t afraid of ending his run ripped to pieces or exploding in a shower of light. He was afraid of dying uselessly. Derezzing slowly while the programs he was intended to protect suffered needlessly, and the system fell to pieces around him. It always seemed like such an impossible, ridiculous concern that he had dismissed it without much thought. Suddenly that dismissal seemed foolishly shortsighted. His fears were very real and very present, and he couldn’t fight them off or pick up a disc to defend the Grid. The worst part was he had already lost so many programs, even before he was critically injured and forced to abandon the fight. His uselessness wasn’t a result of his injury—it had _caused it_. His failure had cost the Grid dearly, and would cost it more if they couldn’t find a way to keep Flynn alive.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Clu saw the light before he heard the sound that accompanied it. A brief flash of white, and a screech like someone sliding backwards across the arena floor. It almost sounded like the scream of a program, but the noise was too abnormal, too high pitched to have come from any known entity dwelling on the Grid. Even a swarm of gridbugs didn’t sound that terrifying.  
  
The light grew larger over time, but the sound disappeared. It zigzagged back and forth, occasionally blinking out, and then reappearing, only to have increased in size. Clu was starting to fear what would happen when it reached him. His growing panic made his circuits burn brighter, eating up precious energy, and making him a bright beacon for whatever was so rapidly approaching his tiny, floating universe. If only he could dim them, make himself invisible, like Tron had. He concentrated on trying to first calm himself, and then not only dim his own lights, but cut off every line he had left open for stray feeds and sensory data. Whatever he could do to make himself smaller, in any possible sense.  
  
Another shriek pierced the darkness, and Clu threw himself down onto the surface of the rock, trying to wedge his body against a small outcropping. When the light finally drew close enough to make out the shape, he could see white circuits, barely illuminating pale flesh and lighting up at the break of jagged, broken limbs, only held together by thin ribbons of circuit. A long, curved line marked the creature’s mouth. It opened to let out another raspy shriek, and Clu no longer had to worry about dimming his circuits to match his truncated lines and feeds—they did it on their own.  
  
 _It was looking for him_. The creature stopped when he went dark, and he could see its fingers grasping another rock, casting a glow across the surface and giving him some minimal sense of depth in the darkness. The other rock was close enough that he could have jumped to it, but the creature’s face was turning side to side, searching for the meal it had misplaced. The thought made him want to curl up and find some way to hide _under_ the rock. Not that it would help—standing on top instead of phasing through it seemed to be a matter of convenience for the thing. He watched as it stood up and twisted around to cast a wider net. Everything about its render, down to the details of the facial contours, the way it stood straight and turned, was exactly like a Basic or an Iso. The only differences were in the half-formed coded stumps and broken voxels, and _that mouth_. The horrible, jagged maw that he had seen in action, tearing through armored monitors like they were liquid energy.  
  
The creature seemed smart enough to know he was still nearby. It stalked across its own rock, and Clu could hear it emit a faint buzzing sound as it drew closer to where he lay hiding. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem able to synchronize with its own environment any better than he could. It was unaware of his presence without his circuits broadcasting his energy into the open. For once, Clu was grateful that Flynn’s suit designs had been so careful to control system feedback to native circuits.  
  
Another sound came echoing through the darkness, followed by the rumble of shifting rock. The creature lit up in anticipation, turned, and bounded over the gap between rocks, tearing across the empty space in the direction of the new noise. It alternated between using its hands—if they could be called hands—to steady itself, and standing on two legs. When it was far enough away that he was sure it couldn’t see or hear him anymore, Clu sat up and tried to make out whatever sound had drawn the creature’s attention. It wasn’t the same otherworldly shriek, but it was unusual. At first he thought it was someone calling out for help, but then the sound tapered off in a wordless wail, before disappearing completely. He waited, and then it came across the void again—only this time he could hear it clearly, and its source became instantly apparent.  
  
“ _Daaaaad!_ ”  
  
Sam. He was somewhere out there, in the darkness. With that thing hunting him.  
  
Clu abandoned his concerns about keeping his lights low and jumped across the distance to the nearest floating rock. What he had gathered from the little he saw with the creature nearby gave him sufficient data to make a decent guess on his jump, landing him on the edge, but with enough room to get a solid grip. He tried to recall the path he had seen it take on its way toward Sam’s location, finding it much easier to move about from rock to rock than he previously assumed. The area seemed to be littered with them, and as long as he followed the pale glow of the body running ahead, he managed to keep up without much trouble—apart from the occasional collision.  
  
He was only a few nanos behind, listening to Sam’s calls, and the chilling screech of the broken monstrosity as it hunted for the small user. The boy didn’t seem to have enough sense to be quiet, or he had no idea how much danger he was in; he kept wailing, growing more frantic with each cry until a triumphant shriek eclipsed him entirely. The creature scuttled across the surface of a rock, searching for its prey as Clu pushed himself harder and burned precious energy in a desperate bid to close the gap. He landed hard on the rock to the sound of Sam screaming, again. Without stopping to consider the consequences, Clu called out to him, if only to _shut him up_. “Sam, be quiet!”  
  
The panicked squealing stopped, and Clu heard a tentative, “Dad?”  
  
Clu didn’t have time to correct the boy. He crawled across the rock, searching for a glow to give away the user’s location. He spied a faint halo of light from around the side of a small outcropping, just as the mass of lurid white circuits and torn render appeared from _inside_ the rock, closer to Sam than Clu could be in the time it would take to intervene. Clu panicked and reached for his disc, remembering too late that he had lost it during the melee in the alley. The only weapon he had was a baton clipped to his leg. He grabbed it and produced a short edge for combat, only to realize how pointlessly foolish it was when he was still too far away to engage the creature. Instead he pulled his arm back and hurled the baton as hard as he could, hoping against all logic that his pathetic attempt at offering a distraction would actually work; maybe it would go after him, and give Sam enough time to get away. He couldn’t pinpoint the imperative that made Sam’s safety such a high priority, but it was there, and he had acted before he could give it any real thought.  
  
The baton struck the center of the creature’s chest, sinking in blade-first to the blunt end, where it stayed. Clu waited on his hands and knees with one arm still outstretched from the throw. The black space around them suddenly seemed oppressively silent as the creature looked down, pawed at the baton, and then turned its lifeless, empty gaze on Clu. Its skin flickered like static, its circuits dulled, and like broken code it derezzed from a fatal blow that hadn’t been intended. The white of its voxels flickered out as they rained down on the rock, leaving only the pale glow of Sam’s suit and Clu’s own lights to illuminate the small area between them.  
  
“Sam,” Clu said quietly, “come here.” He needed to inspect the boy’s render himself. If he hadn’t been fast enough, if he had missed a strike from those wicked claws, if Sam couldn’t move…  
  
The sound of small boots scraping over the rock filled the darkness as Sam flung himself across the ground and into Clu’s arms. “ _Dad!_ ” he sobbed, seemingly doing his best to attach himself to Clu at every possible contact point. “I wanna go home!”  
  
“Sam,” Clu repeated. “Sam.” Finally, when the boy refused to be budged, he was forced to leave him there, hanging with his arms around Clu’s neck and his gangly little legs wrapped around his waist. “I’m not your father.”  
  
Sam sniffled and—Clu was pretty sure—wiped his nose across the administrator’s shoulder. “Clu?” he ventured timidly. “Did my dad make you come down here?”  
  
Clu set the boy on the ground after he had disengaged his limbs. “No. We both fell.”  
  
“Where are we?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He had his theories, but it didn’t seem like the appropriate time to voice them, given the user’s tendency toward panic. “We have to find a way back to the city.”  
  
Clu stood up and crouched down, using his circuits to illuminate the ground until he spied the baton, lying in a pile of black cubes. He brushed them aside and retrieved the baton, clipping it to his leg as he righted himself and turned back to Sam. “You seem whole, has your shell been damaged?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Are you hurt?”  
  
Sam patted himself on the chest with both hands and shook his head. “I’m okay.”  
  
That was a relief, although they were by no means safe yet. Clu could limit the energy bleed from his circuits, and he could even keep himself running dark when necessary, as long as he focused on it, but he couldn’t teach Sam how to do it. He knew from Flynn that users contained much more energy, in what seemed to be a far more concentrated form, and they had almost no control over how it filtered into the system around them. Sam was still in something Clu had decided was akin to beta stage, which meant he would have even less control over his own faculties than his father.  
  
More importantly, he now had a lead on how to kill the creatures, but no way to tell the others. The shock of the unintended deresolution was still fresh in his temporary memory, and he kept replaying it over and over until he was able to pinpoint the fatal factor in his attack. Clearly the creatures were vulnerable when phased, but to what degree? Was it the blade that did the most damage, or the spot where the body had been struck? He wouldn’t know without further testing, and in their present situation, testing meant another life-or-death encounter with his and Sam’s survival at stake. Without knowing where they were going or how they might get back up to the city, that was simply out of the question.  
  
He needed more data.  
  
“Do you remember what happened before you fell down here?” he asked. “What was that sound?”  
  
“I dunno,” Sam muttered with a shrug.  
  
“Did you see any sentries or monitors fall with you?”  
  
“I don’t _know_ ,” Sam whined, drawing out the last syllable.  
  
“How long have you been down here?”  
  
Sam stomped his foot and threw his arms out to either side, suddenly becoming petulant. “I said I don’t know! Leave me alone!”  
  
“I can’t leave you alone,” Clu said.  
  
“Then why do you have to ask me so many questions!”  
  
“Because I need information,” Clu answered truthfully.  
  
Was there a bottom to the empty space around them? If there was a bottom, that meant there would be a top, but which way was it? Even trying to backtrack through all the gravity shifts he had been aware of, he couldn’t account for those he _hadn’t_ , and that left him guessing at which direction might be up. He hated guessing.  
  
“So what do we do?” Sam asked. He poked at Clu’s open palm until he found a way to slide his fingers around and grasp the hand that hadn’t been offered to him. “Where do we go?”  
  
Clu shrugged. He let Sam hold his hand, and finally gripped back when a gentle tug prompted him. He would address it later if it became an issue. For the time being it was the only connection he had left, and he wasn’t anxious to sever it.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
Quorra knew where to find Radia. She knew the same way she was certain Radia knew they were coming from the moment the decision had been made to leave the safety of the command ship, and fly to Arjia. Tron had been right about the information the alpha Iso filtered from the system. Of course Quorra wasn’t surprised; after all, Tron was the primary system monitor. It was his job to know who was doing what, and how it affected the Grid. She only wondered if he had told Clu, or if he kept the information to himself in the interest of peace. They didn’t usually discuss system business with her unless she asked, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask about that.  
  
“Hello, Quorra,” Radia called as they entered the Nexus. Her voice echoed around the chamber and bounced back again, wrapping around Quorra like a warm embrace. “You’ve brought friends.”  
  
Jarvis remained in the doorway, but Dyson was at Quorra’s side, eyeing Radia’s glowing form suspiciously with his one remaining eye. When Quorra put a hand on his arm he relaxed a little, though his expression remained grim and firmly fixed on the Iso leader. “We’ve come to ask you for help. It’s Flynn,” Quorra said.  
  
Radia stepped down out of the light and appeared before them in her singular form; she lacked the headdress and adornments that she had favored for so many cycles, but she looked no less regal as she glided across the open space with her arms held wide. “I will help however I can,” she said. “Please, tell me what you need.”  
  
Quorra turned and gestured Jarvis into the room. He hesitated only a nano before trotting up behind her with his disc offered up in both hands. The display shimmered to life, presenting a mockup of Flynn’s body, rendered in detail down to the puncture that threatened to kill him if they didn’t fix it soon. It rotated slowly as all four programs looked on in horrified fascination.  
  
“This is quite troubling,” Radia said as she turned the image to examine it from different angles. She hummed quietly as she zoomed in on the damage.  
  
“Luckily he was only hit by debris. It could have been much worse if one of those things had grabbed him. They're…” Quorra paused to think of a way to describe something so unlike anything she had ever seen before.  
  
Radia nodded absently. “They are unimaginably dangerous, and quite frightening. We are very fortunate that they chose to end their attack when they did.”  
  
Engrossed in the display, Radia missed the wary look that passed between Quorra and Dyson. Before Quorra could stop him, Dyson reached out and snatched the disc from Radia’s slender hands. “You knew about them already,” he snarled.  
  
Normally Quorra had no problem sensing the emotional state of the alpha Iso. They were all connected, after all, and Radia never attempted to hide any part of herself from her people. There was no need. But at that moment, Quorra sensed nothing. Only cold, empty space. Radia had been hiding something, but Quorra had been too distracted by their predicament to notice. “Radia… tell me you didn't know.”

Slowly, and without meeting the eyes of Quorra or Dyson, Radia nodded. “Yes, I did,” she admitted. “I’m so sorry.”

Dyson made a disgusted sound and turned away, and behind them Jarvis muttered something quietly under his breath. For her part Quorra struggled to make sense of Radia’s confession. How could any program have been aware that something so dangerous lurked in the recesses of the Grid and not bothered to warn anyone? Everyone knew there was no love lost between the Iso leader and the system administrator, but that was why they had appointed Quorra to her position as liaison in the first place. That was why she was there! So the Basics and the Isos never lost the bond they had forged over the cycles through the sheer determination of Clu, Tron, and Flynn.  
  
“I have known about them for many cycles,” Radia continued, anxiously, as though she wished desperately to explain herself. “I apologize for not telling you sooner, Quorra. Of all programs, you especially deserved to know.”  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“A real motorcycle can go like, maybe five hundred miles an hour. Probably more.”  
  
Clu cross-referenced Sam’s claim against data he had gathered from Flynn’s many boasts regarding his escapades in the user world, and found the discrepancy was too large to be accepted. “I don’t think that’s true.”  
  
“No it’s really true, I saw it one time!”  
  
“I think you’re wrong.”  
  
Sam let out a melodramatic sigh as his hand slipped from Clu’s, slapping against his side. “I’m not a liar.”  
  
“I didn’t say you were.” He had only thought it. “Can you make the jump to that rock?”  
  
Sam squinted and peered through the darkness at the distant rock Clu had in mind. It was far; a much greater distance than anything the boy had been asked to cover so far during their journey back to the city. He had his concerns that the small user’s legs were inadequate to the task, but he had been surprised before. It wasn’t impossible, merely improbable. “If you can’t, you can hold onto my back, and I’ll carry you across.”  
  
“No, I can do it,” Sam protested. “It’s not that far.”  
  
“Are you sure?”  
  
“Yeah, I just gotta get a running start. Watch.” Sam backed up a few paces and bent over a bit, with one leg back to propel himself forward into a run. At least he was decently coordinated, despite his physical limitations otherwise. “Tell me when.”  
  
Clu shrugged. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.  
  
“Just say go,” Sam demanded. “I’m ready.”  
  
One final quick estimation of the distance Sam would have to cover gave Clu serious reasons to doubt the boy’s confidence in his own abilities. He would have trouble making the leap safely, and Sam was a third his size. “Sam, wait,” Clu tried to say, but Sam was already moving.  
  
“Too late!” he shouted as he zipped past and hurled himself off the edge of the rock face. For a moment it seemed like he might actually make it—his speed and the angle of his jump were nearly dead-on. But then his small body started to lose its momentum, and he began falling, missing the edge of the other rock entirely and slipping into the darkness below. Clu quickly jumped to follow. Sam wasn’t calling for help and he didn’t appear distressed; in fact, from the outline of his suit he seemed to be floating quite comfortably, with his arms and legs spread out as he slowly drifted down.  
  
Clu took advantage of his own momentum to catch up until he could wrap a hand around the boy’s ankle and pull him near. “I warned you,” he said.  
  
“I thought you said go,” Sam lied with an easy shrug. “What do we do now?”  
  
There were no other large rocks nearby that Clu could see, and in truth he couldn’t say for sure which way they should be headed. Conventional Grid physics told him whatever direction they didn’t go when they fell, but his own experiences since arriving in this strange place had taught him that gravity didn’t abide by the same rules as it did on the surface of the Grid. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Do you have any ideas?”  
  
“I’m ten.”  
  
Clu thought for a moment before he asked, “So?”  
  
Sam was quiet, and Clu could see him looking around while he thought about his answer. “Well,” he said finally, “you’re the first person who’s ever asked me what I think.”  
  
“I can’t imagine why,” Clu said with a frown. The more he learned from Sam, the less he felt he understood users. It was beginning to frustrate him, since he had always prided himself on a greater understanding of Flynn than any other program. Naturally.  
  
“Hey,” Sam said, tugging at Clu’s arm, “I see something. There.” He pointed ahead to a wavering light, so small it could barely be seen through the consuming darkness that surrounded them. “What’s that?”  
  
The light appeared from a singular source, flickering gently and fading every so often like a reflection on a liquid surface. There was no telling its true distance; in the void, everything seemed both tantalizingly close and impossibly far. Clu tried to scan ahead to see if he could make out the complete shape and composition of the light’s source, but it was difficult. He needed to be closer. “We’ll have to go over there,” he informed Sam. “It might take some time.”  
  
“Like we’re going anywhere else,” Sam replied, rolling his eyes dramatically. “But what if it’s those things?”  
  
The possibility had occurred to Clu. The creatures had to have come from somewhere, and the void was just as likely as anywhere else. An unknown light source in a vast, empty region of uncoded space, fixed and constant? There were very few other explanations, unless they had somehow managed to make their way back to the surface. Caution was required, but hesitation could leave them both to die where they would never be found. “If it is, I’ll fight them,” Clu said. He knew the secret; catching them while they were shifting through solid data. That gave him some edge over the enemy, even if it was slight. “Hold my hand, and don’t let go unless I tell you to. But if I do, don’t question me.”  
  
“You sound like my mom,” Sam said quietly, but he gripped Clu’s hand tight nonetheless.  
  
Navigating the empty space was significantly easier when one used the floating chunks of rock that dotted the void for propulsion. Clu located a large one and, using his legs to push off like he would for a jump, aimed himself and Sam toward the light. They floated quietly for a while, until Clu was finally able to make out a definite shape to the source of the light. It was jagged, like a broken render, and appeared so small he would have trouble fitting more than his hand inside. His first impression was that it must be a hole, or a crack in the wall of some lit part of the Grid. The source of the light within was still impossible to determine, but it gave him hope that they were nearing home.  
  
“It’s a hole,” Sam observed astutely, if somewhat late. He instantly released Clu’s hand and pushed off toward the light on his own. “Let’s check it out!”  
  
“Sam, wait!” Clu called. He reached out to grab him, but Sam was already out of reach. Clu watched as Sam landed hard atop whatever surface the hole breached. Totally unconcerned with his own safety, the boy scrambled over to the light and peered inside, using his tiny hands to hold himself in place.  
  
“ _Whoa_.”  
  
Clu reached the wall a moment later, landing beside Sam on the far side of the hole, which was still blocked by the boy’s misshapen head. “What is it? What do you see in there?”  
  
“It’s really cool, look.” Sam moved aside so Clu could take a turn. He maintained a grip on the edge of the hole to keep himself in place, but it still provided Clu with enough room to look for himself.  
  
Hope instantly surged through his circuits when he spied what appeared to be the distinctive architecture of Arjia, with its vaulted arches and silver-white curves. Normally Clu disdained the chaotic asymmetry of the Iso city, but he could have dropped to his knees and kissed the ground beneath Radia’s bare feet if it meant he was back where things made sense.  
  
“How do we get inside?” Sam asked. “It’s too small for me.”  
  
Clu drew the baton he had clipped to his leg; a cutting edge would bleed what precious energy he had left, but would that matter? So close to home, he had little reason to fear derezzing anymore. “Move your hand,” he said to Sam. “I’ll see if I can cut through.”  
  
Sam obeyed and pushed himself back along the wall until he could get a grip without having to use the side of the hole. The rock was just as solid as the rest of Grid’s foundation; another encouraging sign that they were close to the city. It chipped away slowly, and with great difficulty. By the time the hole was large enough for both of them to squeeze through, Clu was beginning to feel dangerously weak. Iridescent black particles floated all around in a cloud, with no way to dissolve back into the system. He brushed them aside and pushed himself halfway through the hole to make sure he would fit. When he was sure he wouldn’t become stuck at the shoulders, he backed out again and gestured Sam over. “You first,” he told the boy. “Don’t go _anywhere_ until I’m through.” He felt the need to emphasize that last part, given Sam’s penchant for running off on his own. It reminded him of a certain program with a lust for danger that bordered on self-destructive. The last thing Flynn should have done was expose the boy to Tron’s influence.  
  
A small jolt of fear fired through Clu’s circuits when he thought of Tron. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of the others for some time, for good reason. The last Clu had seen of the other program, he was badly injured and retreating from the battle with Quorra at his side. Clu didn’t know if either of them had made it, or if the entire Grid had become overrun with those _things_. They had no way to fight back. Tron was a powerful program, but it was clear even he couldn’t last long against an enemy who was almost entirely invincible. The information Clu possessed could mean the difference between life and death for every program. Quorra, Tron, and Flynn needed him. The Grid needed him.  
  
“Go, now,” he commanded Sam. “I’m right behind you.”  
  
Sam hesitated, and for a nano Clu thought he might have to shove the boy in against his will. But finally he took a deep breath—which had the rather comical effect of making him puff up a bit—and grabbed hold of the hole’s edge. He slid through easily, and once Clu was certain he’d given Sam enough time to steady himself and move aside, he followed feet-first. Right behind, like he’d promised, and a smile on his face at the thought of finally making it home.  
  
The sight that greeted him on the other side wiped the smile from his face and dulled his circuits pale. The vaulted arches and silver-white curves of Arjia were never so _wrong_ , even in their inherent lack of balance. Nothing looked the way it should have; columns were broken and twisted, dull gray where they should have been alight and glowing gently. In places the architecture dropped off entirely, broken at the ends and phased into rock, or simply abandoned with bits of unfinished code sputtering along the jagged remnants of a wall, a floor tile, or a doorway. The only light came from a diffused, shimmering glow that Clu had trouble placing right away, until he thought to look up. Above them, rippling across a rocky ceiling, was a shallow pool of liquid energy. It sloshed back and forth, breaking against the downward slope of one wall before turning back in the opposite direction, like a perpetual wave in a tranquil sea. At first he found it strangely beautiful, until he noticed several objects floating in the water, bobbing up and down as they slipped below the waves and resurfaced again. He stared at one until the shape registered and he recoiled against the wall in horror; scattered across the surface of the floating pool were severed pieces of programs.  
  
  
_____________  
  
  
  
“How could you keep this a secret?” Quorra demanded. “Programs have been disappearing for cycles, some of them our own people! How could you hide something so terrible?”  
  
Radia held her slender hands before her like a shield, nevertheless maintaining a look of serene composure while Quorra stormed around her. “You have to understand—”  
  
Dyson maneuvered between the two women and bore down on Radia with a finger aimed accusingly at the center of her throat. “We understand that Flynn may _die_. Clu is gone. Tron is this close to derezzing, and you’ve been _harboring_ these creatures. Hiding them away while they plotted their attack on the Grid. You Isos…”  
  
“Hey,” Quorra objected, grabbing Dyson’s arm and pulling him back a few steps to put some space between everyone. “This is about the whole Grid, not just one part of it.” She turned back to Radia and steeled herself; Radia was her people’s center, she was everything to them, and they were supposed to have been everything to her. They were one. Quorra wanted to believe there was a good reason she had chosen to withhold the existence of the creatures from them. “Please,” she said gently. “Please explain _why_.”  
  
The look of mournful pity on Radia’s face was so jarring that Quorra found it hard not to look away. She forced herself to keep eye contact, staring at Radia until the stalemate forced the other Iso to break her silence. “I have felt them for cycles,” she began quietly. “First in the sea, and then later, when they moved into the Outlands. I felt them as they changed, and became the twisted beings they are now… and I felt them starving.”  
  
“Starving?” Jarvis, who had allowed himself to fade into the background when the shouting started, finally spoke up again.  
  
“They absorb energy. They don’t consume it the way other programs do. When they manifested in the Sea, it was amidst an abundance of energy that changed their code—even as it sustained them. Then they were cut off from that nourishment, by a courageous act that was meant to protect the Grid. It must have seemed like the right idea at the time, to stop the energy leak in the Outlands. But it forced them to find other ways to survive. They are… scavengers. Not by nature, but by necessity.” Radia looked at Quorra, Dyson, and Jarvis in turn, and then turned away. Quorra could sense her shame and despair, and it made her feel hollow inside. “They were able to find pure sources, but over the cycles even those dissipated; the Grid allocates energy where it is needed, and draws from sources throughout the system. When the… when the _creatures_ were unable to find a new source to sustain themselves, they came here. We programs are an abundant source of energy.”  
  
“But you said they don’t consume energy,” Dyson said. “Why would they feed on us if they have to absorb the energy in order to survive?”  
  
Quorra had already worked out the grisly details ahead of the other two. She crossed her arms over her chest and shuddered. “They don’t actually feed on us. They take our energy and bring it back, where they can absorb it later.” She thought of the programs they had torn apart in their earlier frenzy. She thought of Clu, whose fate was still unknown. “We’re just vessels. They don’t want our code.”  
  
Everyone was quiet then, slowly processing the information Radia had provided. A new kind of program that preyed on the others, with an apparent preference for Isos, if Tron's reports on missing programs was an indication of their usual activity. Although from what Quorra had seen, they seemed happy to rip apart anyone unlucky enough to get in their way.  
  
“I don’t understand something,” Jarvis said. “You mentioned that you felt them. How? How do you know so much about them, when no one else has even been aware of their existence before now?”  
  
Quorra had wondered the same thing, though she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask about it. In truth, some part of her had hoped the other two would broach the topic, so she felt a strange mixture of both guilt and gratitude toward Jarvis for doing what she had been so reluctant to do herself.

All three programs looked to Radia, waiting anxiously for the answer to Jarvis’ question. It was to Quorra that she spoke when she finally said, “Because they are Isos.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three years isn't such a long wait, right?

“Clu, what is that?” Sam asked timidly. He had once again latched on to Clu’s arm, and pressed his small body as close as he could manage.

In his weakened state, Clu found the proximity of a user oddly comforting, even if Sam wasn’t actually _his_ user. He was something else Flynn had created, and it was preferable to being alone. Clu wondered how far he would have made it without Sam at his side; something about the boy’s will to keep moving galvanized the last remnants of strength that remained in him. “It’s the energy they’ve leeched from other programs. I guess…” He stopped and thought about it for a moment before concluding that Sam could probably cope with the truth. “They tear us apart, eat their fill, then regurgitate the energy into this pool to absorb. That’s the only conclusion I can draw from—Sam? Are you okay?” Clu looked down at the boy; his back was hunched and he had put both hands on his knees. “Is something wrong?”

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Sam gurgled. He squatted on the rock and made heaving sounds that disgusted Clu almost as much as the abomination floating overhead.

“Stop that.”

“I can’t,” Sam groaned. “This is gross. It’s really gross.”

Clu averted his eyes just in time, as the grotesque sound of something wet and unpleasant, accompanied by more retching and groaning from Sam, indicated that he had indeed ‘puked’—whatever that was. After a bit of time had passed, and the boy had apparently calmed down, Clu ventured a cautious glance in his direction. “Are you alright?” he asked. He tried to sound sympathetic, but his discomfort was obvious, even to him.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then wiped that on the wall behind them.

“Don’t apologize,” Clu said, waving it off with a flick of his hand. He was just grateful Sam had chosen the wall this time, instead of his arm. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Um, I kind of got sick on your shoe, actually.”

Following Sam’s line of sight, Clu looked down at his own boot. “Well… just don’t do it again, please,” he requested as gently as possible.

Sam nodded and gave him a halfhearted smile. “Okay.”

Clu was about to return the gesture to reassure the boy that he wasn’t mad, when a sudden lurch in his processes made his knees buckle and his body go slack. He was critically low on energy; the effort it had taken to get through the wall into the cavern had cost him dearly. Without the Grid, he would derez shortly. Sam would be left alone, standing helpless right where the creatures would return when they needed their own energy replenished.

He fell slowly thanks to the strange low gravity, coming to rest on what was probably meant to look like the floor of Arjia’s central hub. His circuits flickered and faded, warning him of impending deresolution. “Sam, come here. I need you to listen to me.”

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked, an edge of panic in his voice as he hopped over and knelt next to Clu. “What happened?”

“I’m out of energy. It means I’m going to derez.” Sam looked at him quizzically, and Clu tried to think of a way to explain it in terms even the simplest function could grasp. The boy struck him as generally clever, but it failed them both at the most inopportune moments. “I’ll die,” he said finally. It was the clearest, most direct way to express the situation in the time they had left. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to help the situation at all. Sam started to breathe heavily, and tears welled in the corners of his eyes. “No, no, calm down,” Clu pleaded. “You’ll be alright. You just have to get out of here and back up to the city.”

“I can’t!” Sam wailed. “I don’t know what to do!”

“That’s why I need you to listen to me. Those programs, they can phase through solid objects. You saw that one that attacked you do it earlier. When they do that, they can be hurt. You need to find Flynn or Tron and tell them about it.” More than anything, that information would be crucial to the survival of the Grid. “Will you remember?” he asked Sam, who was clinging to his hand like a gridbug.

“But I don’t know where to _go_ ,” Sam whimpered.

“It probably takes a lot of energy for them to phase through something. I doubt they would travel all the way up to the city like that. There’s probably a path, or a tunnel somewhere around here. Find that.” He hated the idea of sending the boy on alone, but he had very little time left, and even with the odd physics of the void, it was unlikely Sam could carry him. His strength probably matched the rest of his physical limitations.

Sam nodded over and over, but it wasn’t until Clu pried his hand away that he actually stood up and started to move. “Go,” Clu urged him. “If you encounter more of the creatures, try to hide. Make yourself… smaller.” The effort it took to continue speaking forced him to shut down another process, and the first to go was his ability to register visual input. The world went dark, and only Sam’s tiny voice assured him he wasn’t gone yet.

“I’m already pretty small,” Sam said with a pathetic sniffle.

“I know,” Clu said, nodding. Physical senses went next, dulling him to the cold floor against his fading circuits. He smiled—or he hoped he was smiling—at Sam. “You’ve done really well despite that, though.”

_____________

A wild series of emotions warred in Quorra; confusion, guilt, betrayal—and an indignant fury that built within her like a small explosion, too slow to kill, and too fast to contain. She thought of Radia’s first revelation; that the “creatures” they were fighting had been forced from the Sea of Simulation because Quorra, Tron, and Clu had cut off their energy supply. The knowledge that she was responsible for the deaths of so many programs, a large number of which were her own people, had been crushing. Nevertheless, she had accepted her part in it, and was resolved to do everything she could to rectify that mistake. But then Radia revealed that they were in fact a warped form of Iso, that she had been aware of them for cycles. Did she really believe Quorra would ignore what that meant?

“What do you mean?” Jarvis asked.

“She means,” Dyson said, “that they’re her people. That’s why she hid them from the rest of the Grid.”

Neither Jarvis nor Dyson could possibly understand the deeper implication, but Quorra knew. It was why Radia, who hadn’t looked up from the floor since her confession, suddenly fixed an unwavering stare on Quorra. It had been so easy to accept that the creatures were attracted to Isos because they were different; they were _special_ , when in fact it was something much, much worse. Something that Quorra wasn’t sure she could forgive. “No,” she said, interrupting the others. “There’s more. Tell them, Radia.” _Tell them so I don’t have to_ , she thought.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then Radia hitched her shoulders up in an uncharacteristically defeated shrug and wrapped her arms around herself. “Through me… they are connected to every Iso,” she said, letting the others come to the same conclusion Quorra had already reached.

That was why the number of missing Isos was so much higher; the creatures weren’t attracted to them, they were just better at _finding_ them. It also explained why Radia had isolated herself for so long, and why she had turned over everything to Quorra and Jalen not long after the incident in the Outlands. Her connection to the rest of the Isos might as well have placed a spotlight on them for their warped kin to follow. It was only Radia’s guilt over their origins that kept her from revealing them to the others, and ensuring their destruction.

“You let your own people die.”

“I had to protect as many as I could, Quorra. They _are_ our people, even if they may not seem like it. They, along with those of us who were lucky enough to have emerged whole, are the last remaining Isos,” Radia said.

Quorra took the disc out of Dyson’s hand and gave it back to Jarvis. “We’re done here,” she announced flatly. “Let’s go.”

“Quorra.”

“We’ll meet up with the command ship and try to find a way to help Flynn ourselves.”

“Quorra, please,” Radia insisted. She reached out, stopping just short of grasping Quorra’s arm. “We are all that there will ever be.”

Poised to turn on her heel and leave, Quorra drew herself up and said, “And I intend to protect the ones who are still left.”

_____________

Clu came to with a start that propelled him upright. He sat still for several nanos after that, staring slack-jawed at whatever was in front of him, before it registered that he was still in the cavern. He didn’t seem to have derezzed. The realization that he was still operating was almost as alarming as the recognition of his surroundings; he had run out of energy, his processes had begun shutting down one by one. The next step was deresolution. He’d seen it on the discs of unlucky programs who wandered off into the Outlands and gotten themselves lost. No one simply _woke up_ from that.

“Are you okay?” a tiny, quiet voice asked him. Sam. Clu spun around to find the boy crouched on the ground where the white floor tiles fused with the dark rock. “I was worried you wouldn’t get up.”

“Sam.”

“You remember me, right?”

That was a ridiculous question, of course he remembered. He also remembered giving Sam explicit instructions to leave and find a way up to the surface. “What are you doing here? I told you to leave me.”

“I know,” Sam said, simultaneously nodding and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his suit. “But I thought of a way to help you.”

Clu was almost afraid to ask. He’d seen his own user’s improvised strategies for “helping” in action, and they were only occasionally the sort of measures a rational individual would suggest, let alone carry out. The way Sam was fidgeting nervously, biting his lip and repeatedly swiping the back of his hand across his nose, Clu had a feeling it wasn’t something he thought the program might approve of. “What… did you do?” he ventured carefully. Sam had saved his life, after all, he didn’t want to be too hard on the boy. “It’s okay, just tell me.”

Rather than answer, Sam shrugged his little shoulders, and then slowly, warily, his eyes left Clu’s and rolled upward, to the pool on the ceiling.

Oh. Oh, _users_ , no. The wave of vile revulsion that came over Clu nearly sent him back into a shutdown. He swayed in place, placing both arms on the tile in an effort to keep himself upright. “It’s okay,” he hastily assured Sam, who seemed to be on the verge of another hysterical breakdown. “It’s fine.” It was horrifying, a terrible necessity that Clu might not have been able—or willing—to do on his own, but it had been a fairly wise decision under the circumstances. Maybe not ideal, but certainly better than some of the alternatives, and resourceful enough that Clu couldn’t help but admire Sam’s quick thinking, despite the disgust that rippled through his circuits like a cold shiver. Maybe the boy’s initiative was a side effect of his beta development. Clu tagged the thought for later consideration and tucked it away in a temporary folder so he could focus on the matter at hand. “Alright,” he said, standing as quickly as his recent shutdown would allow. A nano of dizziness struck him as his senses recalibrated, but after that he was fine; Sam stayed crouched on the ground, where he watched with rapt attention. Once he felt steady on his feet, Clu held out a hand to the boy and helped him up. “Our first priority is to get out of here. We don’t know when they’ll be back, or in what numbers. Did you find a tunnel while I was down?”

Sam shook his head to indicate he hadn’t, and Clu frowned. “It’s alright, we’ll find it together,” he said reassuringly. Distantly he wondered if they weren’t just delaying the inevitable, but he dismissed those dark thoughts as Sam turned and bounded off toward the nearest towering arch of the poorly replicated Arjia.

“This place is cool,” Sam called over his shoulder. Apparently he was back to baseline now that he knew he wasn’t in trouble.

“It’s not _cool_ ,” Clu said. “It shouldn’t even exist.”

Sam shrugged and kept hopping ahead of Clu, seemingly intent on touching every single surface in the cavern. Faded lines and floor tiles pulsed gently whenever he neared them, like they were eager to soak up some of his energy; it reminded Clu of the creatures, and how they only seemed to absorb the energy edge of a disc when struck. He repressed a shudder and kept moving.

“Hey, is there another one of my mom?” Sam asked curiously. He was still bouncing between the walls of the corridor they were traveling, occasionally spinning as he drifted through the air. He seemed to have adapted well to the lower gravity. “I mean, there’s you, and you look like my dad. So is there a program who looks like my mom?” On the return from the right wall he tripped, going down on his hands and knees. His palms slapped against the ground hard enough to send an echo through the chamber. “Sorry,” he said once the sound finally faded.

“Be careful, please. And no, there is no program who looks like Jordan. As far as I know.” Clu had never seen her, but it seemed unlikely Flynn would create a facsimile of his wife for no reason. He did numerous things for no reason on a regular basis, but that one struck him as the least practical; after all, Flynn had a Jordan already in his world. “Why?”

Having righted himself, Sam resumed his unnecessary acrobatics, apparently no worse for the wear. He shrugged and hopped up onto a low wall. “I don’t know. Who else will be your girlfriend?”

Clu declined to answer that, in part because the topic had been expressly forbidden by Flynn, but also because their current predicament and the looming danger that could appear at any moment shared certain very uncomfortable parallels to Quorra and her people, and Clu still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He couldn’t deny that the creatures, apart from their broken, twisted bodies and sickly gray skin, bore an eerie resemblance to the chaotic, asymmetrical body circuits of the Isos. His suspicions had been aroused during the battle, and he did his best to brush aside the creeping doubt that had plagued him throughout their journey across the void, but once they were inside the cavern it became impossible to sever the two in his mind any longer; the creatures had built themselves an Iso city. They had built Arjia. With details so specific it couldn’t have been mere observation—beside the fact that any one of them appearing in Arjia to conduct pointless architectural reconnaissance would have raised an alarm and pushed Radia even further into hiding.

“Radia…” Clu muttered under his breath. Of _course_ she knew. If the creatures were what he thought they were, then she couldn’t have been ignorant of their existence for very long, if she ever had been.

“What?” Sam perked up at the sudden noise in the otherwise silent hallway. He was upside down, doing some sort of repetitive exercise with his arms. If his energy capacity matched his limited size, he gave no indication of it. “Is that a person or a place?”

“A program. She leads the Isos.”

“What about her?”

Clu shook his head. He ignored Sam’s petulant frown. “Nothing,” he said. “It’s too hard to explain.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Sam pouted, rolling his eyes melodramatically. He hopped down and fell into step beside Clu. Walking was difficult, and it had taken Clu some time to compensate and keep from lifting off with each step, but Sam seemed perfectly comfortable switching rapidly between both forms of locomotion.

Thinking about whether or not his fellow admin—the leader of an entire half of the Grid,  as well as one of Quorra’s closest friends—might have been involved in an attempt to conceal the existence of a threat to the entire system was _not_ improving Clu’s already rapidly darkening mood. With his new understanding of the creatures and their potential origins, and his suspicions regarding Radia, Clu would have no choice but to bring the matter to Flynn and Tron. How would Quorra feel about that? She was fiercely loyal to her people, naturally, and she would undoubtedly feel compelled to defend Radia. That was, of course, if she had made it out of the melee in one piece. Tron had already been seriously injured, and it was unlikely Quorra would have been able to defend herself with any more success than the system monitors, no matter her skill. It was impossible to stop an enemy that couldn’t be hurt.

Sam grew quiet beside him, and it was the unusual silence that finally pulled Clu out of his thoughts and back to the moment. He looked down at Sam and blinked. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“Nope.”

“Oh.” Dwelling on hypothetical scenarios wasn’t going to get him anywhere, and his frustration appeared to be upsetting Sam. It seemed like an appropriate moment to lighten the mood; if nothing else, it would benefit them both to find something a bit more positive to think about. “What is Jordan like?” he asked.

Sam instantly lit up with excitement, and he bounced on his toes a few times before taking the kind of deep breath Clu had come to expect before Sam launched into a topic he really enjoyed discussing. “She’s so cool,” he began, “and she makes buildings. Like this.” He put a hand on the closest wall, then whipped his head back around smiled proudly at Clu.

Jalen had designed Arjia, of course. If it had been Shaddox, Clu might have wondered if the buildings had been influenced by Flynn’s input from his wife, but it seemed unlikely Jalen had taken any cues from the user. Clu squinted at the vaulted ceilings above them and then frowned at Sam. “Not this one, though?”

“No, more like, um, like the other part of the city. Stuff like that.”

So, Jordan built user structures, Flynn built the Grid. It made sense that they enjoyed being together. Clu shared his own mutual interests with Tron and Quorra, of course. Nothing so specific, but they did have a lot in common. Although they differed in their appreciation for explosives, with Tron being the most enthusiastic, and Quorra coming in a close second due to her great passion for weapons. He blamed himself for that—he had let her drive the light runner in the Outlands, after all. That was where it all started.

“Hey, Clu?”

Clu hummed a half-distracted reply, and Sam asked, “What should we call them?”

“Call what?”

“Those things. The monsters.”

Sam looked up at him expectantly, but Clu could only shrug and shake his head in reply. Flynn usually named anything that needed a name. Clu supposed he would have one ready by the time they reached the city, and until then, _monsters_ worked just fine.

_____________

Tron was taking another pointless inventory of his numerous injuries when movement from the corner caught his eye. Flynn twitched a few times before settling down again, but something told Tron it wasn’t a good sign. He couldn’t crawl over to check on the user, and he didn’t trust the sentries not to accidentally kill him while trying to help, so he was left with little to do but watch and wait, and hope.

He tried pinging Quorra, only to find her inaccessible. Since he had received no word of an attack on Arjia, it was safe to assume she was purposely stalling her access line. Tron could only wonder why, given the circumstances. It seemed like a really inconvenient moment to make herself unavailable. Suddenly alone for the first time that he could recall in countless cycles, Tron began to feel the gripping onset of panic; dread crept along his circuits and wound tight around every parcel of data, until his chest was heaving and he had gripped the edges of the chair so tight they began to fracture. When he let go his fingers ached, and a bright imprint remained for just an instant before fading. He looked down at the new cracks on the arm of the chair, glowing a faint white at the edges. Clu could fix it. He would insist on fixing it, when he got back. Tron tried to convince himself that Clu _would_ come back, along with Quorra. Of course Flynn would be fine; after all, he was a user. Tron just had to keep himself together until then. He just had to wait, uselessly, for everyone else to save the day.

_____________

Up ahead a break in the wall of the cavern gave Clu the first sign of hope he’d seen since they crawled their way into the creatures’ hive. Predictably, Sam was already rushing toward it when Clu called him back. “You don’t know what might be there,” he reminded him. “Let me go first.”

Sam looked at Clu and frowned. “What am I gonna do if you get eaten by something?”

“Improvise.”

“What does that mean?” Sam asked.

Clu was starting to wonder just what kind of language pack Flynn had bothered installing when he and Jordan created Sam. “It means figure something out when the time comes. For now,” he said, “stay here until I call you. Here.” He pointed to the ground below Sam’s feet.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam grumbled.

After casting a stern glance back at Sam, and reacting to the petulant frown it earned him in return, Clu made his way around the jutting portion of the cavern wall that marked the break in the rock. If it turned out to be a tunnel, there was no real question whether or not they would take it; returning to the empty space below the city was out of the question, and staying in the cavern was suicide. Even in the unknown depths of some passage carved by creatures that shouldn’t exist, they were better off than where they had been. _If_ it was a tunnel. If not…

“What’s there?” Sam called to him. His voice sounded closer than it should have. Clu clenched his jaw and sighed. He wondered if Flynn had as much trouble getting his son to listen to simple commands. Even Jarvis had a greater capacity for focus than Sam seemed to possess.

“A tunnel,” Clu answered truthfully. No point in trying to talk his way around it if Sam was just going to come and take a look for himself anyway. “Probably goes straight up to the city.” He wondered if Sam was prepared for what they might encounter in the passageway—if he understood that there was no guarantee they would make it to the other side.

“So we have to take it, right?” Sam asked. He stopped just shy of the mouth of the tunnel and leaned over to take a look at the empty stretch of black they would have to traverse for an unknown length. “Hey, Clu?”

“Yes?”

“Did my dad ever tell you about haunted houses?”

Clu thought about it, and he even did a quick search of his memory to make sure the information hadn’t been allocated to some dusty reference file he had every intention of organizing cycles ago. Nothing came up in the results. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Dad took me to one at Halloween last year. They had these people under the curtains and they grabbed your ankles when you walked past. The lights were flashing a lot and the music was so loud. So I got really scared when one guy jumped out, and my dad had to carry me the rest of the way.” Sam took a deep breath and stepped up next to Clu. Not as close as before, but Clu could still feel the nervous energy rolling off the white circuits on his suit. When he looked up, Clu could see the boy was shaking. A user might not have noticed it, but Clu’s visual tracking could pick up the infinitesimal shifts in his rested state. “What do I do if I get scared in here?” Sam asked quietly.

Clu cocked his head to the side and looked at Sam the same way he often looked at Tron when the other program was trying to slip something past him. He didn’t think Sam was intentionally trying to be manipulative, but his ulterior motive was obvious. “You want me to carry you through the tunnel?” he asked.

Sam shrugged lightly. “Maybe just a little bit?”

“Okay,” Clu said after thinking about it for a moment. “But only halfway.”

That didn’t seem to be what Sam was after. He pursed his lips and looked down at the ground. “I guess…” he muttered quietly.

Clu smiled. “And then you can carry _me_ the rest of the way.”

“Wait, what?”

_____________

“We’ll rendezvous with Tron and the command ship, and come up with some sort of plan to erase these things from the Grid on our own.”

“What about Flynn?” Jarvis asked. He was struggling to keep up with the others, leaning forward as he shuffled along behind them. It nearly threw him off balance more than once, but Quorra didn’t stop. She wanted to be away from Arjia. Away from where she could feel the other Iso’s shame and disappointment. Part of her wondered if Radia could feel the rage and betrayal Quorra felt certain she was broadcasting openly to anyone who passed, but in the end it didn’t matter. Nothing stayed silent for long on the Grid; eventually other programs would find out, and then… there was no telling what would happen after that. It could spark new distrust between the Isos and the Basics. Things could end up worse than they ever had been, and now they might not have Flynn or Clu to help calm the millions of programs who called the Grid home—who deserved to believe that their leaders would never send them out for slaughter in a misguided attempt at some twisted version of being _fair_.

“What are we going to do about Flynn?” Jarvis said again. This time Quorra could hear the frustration in his voice. He was clearly determined not to be ignored. “We have to save him. He’s more important than… than anyone else.”

“We’re going to take Flynn back to the portal,” Quorra replied without thinking. She hadn’t given it any thought before Jarvis demanded an answer, even when Tron suggested it the first time back on the ship, she hadn’t really bothered to consider it for more than a few nanos. Programs didn’t just _go_ to the portal. No one but Tron and Clu ever went there, and even then it was only with Flynn. She wasn’t even sure they could convince the programs who piloted the command ship to fly to it on their own. A direct order from Clu might work, but obviously they couldn’t fall back on that.

Dyson was at her side, watching her carefully. She could see countless cycles of Tron’s instruction in it. At any other time she might have appreciated that comparison, but under the current circumstances it only reminded her of everything she stood to lose if they failed. “What?” she snapped.

“We can’t take Flynn to the portal,” he said.

Quorra shook her head and cut a hand through the air to stop Dyson before he could mount a serious objection. She knew the risks, she knew the difficulties, and that they faced losing Flynn in the process, but there really were no other options. “It’s the only option remaining. We can’t help Flynn ourselves, and we can’t keep hovering over the city, waiting for those _things_ —” _The other Isos,_ an unwelcome stray thought reminded her. “—waiting for them to destroy the entire Grid while the portal—”

The portal. Quorra spun around and looked for the radiant point of light that hovered in the sky whenever Flynn was among them. It should have been visible from almost any vantage point in the city, but she couldn’t find it now. Smaller lights dotted the darkness between the clouds overhead, but there was no portal among them. It had closed. “ _No_.”

“We need to think about how we’re going to save ourselves, and the Grid,” Dyson said. “Flynn is—”

“We can’t let him die!” Jarvis objected. “He is a _user_ , and he is the creator!”

Dyson rounded on him. “I know that!” he snapped. “But he can’t do anything for us now, and we can’t do anything for him. We have to take matters into our own hands. We have to stop those abominations before they dismantle the entire Grid piece by piece, and all the programs in it.”

Quorra was still reeling from the thought of losing Flynn, of being unable to save the creator. He had made the entire world for them, and they had failed him.

“Quorra!”

Dyson snapped his fingers in front of her face twice to get her attention. “Tron put you in charge. You have to make a decision.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “I thought if we could help Flynn, maybe he could do something, but…” She thought of Tron and Clu, and what each might have done, faced with the same lack of options. Clu would find the most practical, efficient, and probably the simplest way to protect the Grid and all of its programs, as well as prevent further attacks. His entire strategy would be focused on defense. Tron would just blow everything up. He would take the whole Grid down to the lowest level just to see every single one of the creatures lying in a pile of cubes.

A thought occurred to her. “What if we did both?” she asked quietly of no one.

Jarvis and Dyson had resumed bickering over the fate of the Grid, its inhabitants, and its creator. Neither heard her muttered question. Not until she turned and shouted, “Hey!”

They turned at once to face her, whatever they had each intended to say frozen on their lips. She might have thought it was funny if not for the dire circumstances.

Quorra hefted her shoulders in a quick, helpless shrug. “What if we destroyed them all at once?”


End file.
